


Aspic

by likecrackingwater (1thetenfootlongscarf2)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 01:49:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8231926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1thetenfootlongscarf2/pseuds/likecrackingwater
Summary: Graham, Crawford, Bloom - all gone, but the FBI is still trying to solve the bloody aftermaths that made them so famous.





	

The cup of coffee was cooling in Zeller's hand. They had been here for an hour. She was trying to pry answers out of him like a knife between rough oyster shells. Zeller took a sip. The drink was cold and gritty. When her mouth twitched into a smile her eyes did not.  

"Your mother must love what you do." The comment falls flat. She laughs. 

"Will was much better." Her teeth are perfectly white. "He would insult my humanity."

Zeller felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Price must have noticed that lunch was taking longer than usual today. It could wait.

"So," as she spoke she looked him over. "Do you agree with the sentencing of Dr. Du Maurier?"

He shrugged. "I'm not a lawyer Ms. Lounds."

"Listen Brian- may I call you Brian? - this is much bigger than the Ripper or the Shrike. I only want a taste."

"You're not Capote." Zeller felt the coffee in his stomach roil. He remembered how she had used him years ago. "The only truth you want is the one that will outsell Chilton."  _Blood and Chocolate_ had been scrapped for  _The Maw of the Dragon_. It had been on the top of the New York Times Bestseller List for the past five weeks. The jury had been barred from reading it. Price had a paperback, dog-eared and well thumbed, in the foot-well of his car. Someone had sent a copy to Du Maurier with a drawing of her nude, skinned, and quartered on the face page. It was being held in evidence.

"That may be true. Don't you want to have that kind of impact?" Her fingers twitched. The salad she ordered looked pre-wilted and now lay damply on her place. Zeller's burger was untouched as well. He had been outside the blast-radius of Lecter. There was no fear of meat for him but sometimes he would walk past the butcher's at the head of his block and look at the gleaming organs, the rows of purpleish grotesque fruit, and wonder. 

"No." He stood. There was a warm shoot of pain down his spine. "Thanks though. I need to get back to work."

"Here." She pulled out a business card, as sharp and colorful as herself, and rested on the table. "If you ever change your mind."

He left it. She could pay for the food.

 # #

Price was pale with stress when Zeller walked in. From the speakers came the cooing sounds of _Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground_. The other staff, Frankson, Coltnoir, and the rest, were at their places. Each table held a black bag. There was little noise. From Benham's area came the whispers of an autopsy. The girl looked about seven. She would have been cute but her face had been peeled off. As he walked past Zeller pulled off his leather gloves with his teeth. The taste was bitter. His stomach felt like a drum.

"Thank God you're here." Price’s face looked clammy in the bright lights. "We have another one."

"Christ." 

The zipper was harsh though the quiet. For an insane moment Zeller wondered how the EMS managed to bag this. It was a little over six feet long and twelve inches deep.  This one looked awake, her eyes glassy and open. This was supposed to be a meadow, Zeller guessed. There was a hare curled against the woman's side and a crown of wheat in her hair. Like the other there were no imperfections in the lacquer. It was as clear as glass. He couldn't help staring back. 

"What does this say to you?" The voice was loud but lacked the power of Crawford. Tayana Vauth had taken to her new position like a duck to an oil slick. To counter her predecessor's laissez-faire interaction she ruled with an iron fist. She did not want a public downfall.

Price smoothed a gloved hand over the top of the block. "This person knows how to build things. Something this size takes time, especially the drying between layers."

"It's a take on the Fukahori technique." When he bent over Zeller could see how she was suspended in the block like a fly in amber. "Layers of resin and pant."

"Except this one's more into modeling." Price ducked his head as Vauth's face twisted in distaste.

"That was not appropriate, Price. And I know all this gentlemen. It's been on my desk for days. What I'm asking is _why these people_  and  _what does the symbolism mean_?"

"Jesus." Zeller's been running on scarce sleep for days and Lounds wound him up so tight his head is about to split open. "We're not Will Graham. I have no idea why this sicko went from rocks to bunnies. Maybe Boston University's Department of Comparative Literature can tell you  _what this means_." 

Vauth's eyes are dark despite the lights overhead, and her face is still. "Go home. Now. If you still want your job you can come back tomorrow."

Zeller pulled his gloves back on. Some of the tips were dark with his spit.

"And call Boston University." The words hammered his back as he left. 

The hallways were full of people. Their heads were bowed over files and tablets. The building was always an anthill. Zeller avoided most of the noise by looking busy himself. In the parking garage he sat in his car and pulled up the number for Dr Nora Hanson, the Department head, and left her a message.

 # #

She called back when he was eating dinner. The plastic was warm and slightly soft from the microwave. He almost burnt his hand on the steam and he fumbled the call.

“Hello, this is Brian Zeller.”

“Hello Mr. Zeller. This is Dr. Hanson, from Boston. You let me a voicemail earlier about a case. I’d love to help.”

“Great, thanks. Give me a moment.” Zeller muted the phone and carried it to the den. Price had shoved a file into his hand on the way out the door. He opened it and reconnected the call. “Alright. Have you ever consulted on a federal case before?”

He heard Hanson shuffle some papers. “No.”

“I’ll have someone from our office fax you the standard forms – no talking to the press, no posting on social media, no drafting research papers about this until the case hand been prosecuted.”

He could barely make out the scratching of pen on paper. “That could take years,” was all Hanson said.

“Nature of the game.” Zeller moved on. “When that’s processed we can do this a few ways; you can come to Quantico, we can mail you hard copies, or send over digital files on a CD. Some of this might be graphic.”

Hanson hummed. “I can come down on Thursday. Would the papers be processed by then?”

“My boss can put a rush on them. It won’t be a problem.” Zeller looked at the pictures side by side. A man and a woman suspended in lacquer, the former surrounded by a constellation of stones. Price had drilled down to some. The [U.S. Geological Survey](http://www.usgs.gov/) received the samples a week ago. They were still unsure of the exact location but narrowed the region to the Gulf Coast. Every local office had been put on alert. Then the rabbit woman turned up in the green of a suburb in Kentucky. “Do you have any early thoughts?”

“From what you’ve told me – the crown of wheat and the rabbit – I’ve had some preliminary ideas. The rabbit has quite a bit to it, from fertility to cowardice. Throughout Asia and northern Africa it is linked to the moon.” Zeller was jotting down notes as she spoke. “Wheat is pretty European though. It has a strong background in Abrahamic religions. I…” she trailed off. “Were any other bodies discovered?”

Zeller sighed. “I’ll let you know on Thursday.”

“I understand.” She sounded tired and frustrated. Not a good start, but Zeller wasn’t the one who picked her to prise out the rational from the insane.  “Is there anything else?”

He skimmed the notes. There were only a few jotted words. Nothing useful. “You’ve been great. Let’s wait for the office stuff to clear. I’ll see you Thursday.”

He shot the consult office an email. Before he sent it he CC’ed Vauth. It was just as good as telling her he’d be in the next day.

 # #

Price had a cup of coffee waiting when he staggered in the next morning. Zeller had eaten his cold dinner over the sink then stayed up late reading too deeply into an article from American Academy of Forensic Science about the effect of drop heights on porcelain casts of infant skulls. Now his eyes itched. The coffee was too hot, scalding the roof of his mouth. Price sat in one of the free chairs.

“We need to talk.”

Zeller looked around. The morgue bay was mostly empty. “Now?”

“After work.” Price spun in his seat back to the body. It was eerie how perfect she looked. No sign of trauma, no decomposition. “We’ve run into an issue of ID attempts. No one can figure out a way to get down to bodies without destroying them. Coltnoir has been at it for three days. Last night she tried to melt a replica and the pig leg inside was cooked by the time she got to it.”

“So how did he get them in there?” When Zeller tapped the top with a gloved hand it sounded like knocking on a door.

“No idea. Art Crimes in New York is taking a crack at it now. We may have to bring in some experts.” Price rubbed a thumb on a sharp corner of the block.

Zeller groaned. “I talked to Hanson last night.”

“Who?”

“Runs the Comparative Lit Department at Boston. I don’t think she’s going to do well.”

“Too bad.” Price snapped off his gloves. “We need someone else on the team.”

Zeller helped him sort out the pictures on an empty table. The air was cool and metallic in his nose as he breathed. “I thought Vauth would have assigned someone by now.”

“I think she just likes to see us suffer.” Underneath his enthusiasm Price was pragmatic to the point of pessimism.

“Maybe.” Zeller took another sip of coffee. It had cooled enough to be bearable. Price’s tea was untouched. He never got around to it until it was stone cold and bitter.

They spent the morning helping Coltnoir sift through her data. The dead lay quiet behind their locked doors.

 # #

If Vauth was pissed Zeller didn’t ask before he requested a rush on Hanson’s paperwork she didn’t say. The doctor made it through the gate with a keenly self-satisfied air. “I understand what I signed and what Agent Zeller told me,” she had been insistent about using his title when she heard it, “but I think what can be learned from this has deeper impacts than just psychology and criminaology.”

Price rolled his eyes behind her back. Vauth was attentive. “It might. I would be interested in your insight.” She took over the tour, pointing out the bodies. “We have two so far. Both unidentified. That’s not your concern though. We want you to focus on this.”

Hanson looked over the blocks with a critical eyes. “You didn’t say there were two, or that they’d be so different.”

Price smoothed the way. He was always good at that. “Well, we can’t just tell everyone everything. But now that you’ve seen this have you gotten inspiration?”

Hanson pulled her lips in as she thought. “I think that paring the woman with the rabbit and the wheat - especially that it’s a crown - has some religious meaning to it. She’s nude – that could be an insight into her character...” Vauth interrupted her.

“Dr. Hanson, just the symbolism, if you please. We had staff on hand for the profiling itself.”

Hanson turned red but nodded. “Of course. So, the rabbit, as I told Agent Zeller earlier in the week, is a sign of many things. It could be virility or virginity.”

Price nodded sagely. “Rabbits. “ Zeller shot him a look over the body. It was ignored.

Hanson’s eyes flicked over the man. “Rocks are… unusual. I’d have to do some digging of my own to undercover the truth.”

“If you need outside support, we strongly recommended you run it past our consult office first.” Vauth seemed unimpressed. Zeller felt the underwhelming deflation around all four of them. Hanson might be at the top of her field but she didn’t know enough.

“I’ll leave you here. When you’re done stop by my office.”

Price turned back to his table the minute Vauth was out of sight. Zeller was left standing awkwardly by Hanson. Her face was twisted into an expression he couldn’t place.

“I’m sorry this didn’t go as you expected.” It was as much a peace offering as he could give.

Hanson shrugged. “You can’t win them all.” She took a step closer to the block. “Is the rabbit real?”

“We determined that it is fur.” Price didn’t look up. “Not totally sold on the rabbit part.”

“Why?” It looked like a rabbit to Zeller. Two ears, fluffy body, small tail.

“It could have been made of fur from something else and the eyes are glass – totally different from our lady friend here.”

Zeller looked down at the file he held. “Can we trace a taxidermy?”

Price shook his head. “Not unless we can pull it out. Lucky for us there a whole group of these people online. There’s signature eyes, stitching, expressions.”

“If you want a surprised wombat?”

Price grinned. “Or a disappointed duck.”

Hanson reached out towards that table.

“Ah ah ah.” Price raised an eyebrow. “You can look, but don’t touch.” She nodded. Price waved Zeller over. He dropped his voice when he spoke. “Get a digital file for her ready and then get her out of here.”

“Did you find something?” Zeller hissed back.

“No. I just don’t like her here. She asks all the wrong questions.”

“Fine.” Zeller straightened. “But you get to find the next consult. If Art Crimes doesn’t beat you to it.”

“Fine.” Price flapped his hands. “Now shoo.” He went back to dusting the smooth surfaces of resin.

In a few minutes Hanson was done and Zeller walked her to Vauth’s office. He wasn’t invited in.

 # #

His phone jerked him awake like a hand on his throat. He missed the call but before he could check it shrilled again. It was Price, his voice low and urgent.

“I’m a block away. Get dressed. We’re flying to New York.”

Zeller held the phone for a moment then tossed it on his bed and rushed into the bathroom.

Price met him on the landing of the fourth floor, keys in hand and hair wind-swept. Zeller stuttered to a stop. His brain was at least ten minutes behind the rest of him.

“Move it Brian.” Price’s hand tugged the strap of Zeller’s bag on his shoulder. “Places to be, dead people to see.”

“New York?” Zeller could barely hear him as they thundered down the stairs.

“Big Apple. I’ve always wanted to go.”

They hit the lobby at a run. Price’s car was on the sidewalk with hazards flashing. They were on the street in moments. When Zeller finished buckling he stole a look at the dash. It was two in the morning. Jesus.  
“What are we going to?”

Price shrugged. “Vauth called me. She didn’t have your number.” Zeller did not feel guilty and damned if he’d look guilty. “There’s two teams staged.” It was big, whatever it was.

“Maybe it’s the Staten Island Stripper.”

Price puckered his mouth. “I’ve never liked that moniker. It’s so flippant.”

“The dude killed prostates and only left the bones. Besides we don’t name them, it’s all up to the locals.”

Price didn’t reply as he struggled to get out of the warren of streets. By the time they hit the highway Zeller had forgotten what they were talking about. There was a thin fog that clouded the setting moon. This was always Katz’s favorite time of day. She’d call it the witching hour and cackle into Zeller’s ear. They bonded over their weird jobs, long hours, and lapsed Judaism. Price was too polite to mention any of that now. Instead he casually asked, “Did you see the new issue of _Tattle_ _Crime_?” Zeller had been amazed when it got a printing deal but he’d been avoiding it ever since. Except the moment of weakness when Lounds lost his number she hadn’t lost his address.

“No.”

“She got another interview with…” They didn’t really know what to call him anymore, every name too separate and wrapped up in its own history: Hannibal Lecter, the Copycat Killer, the Chesapeake Ripper.

“Another one?”

Price checked the blind spots before he merged into the exit. The highway was deserted. “Yeah.”

“Did you read it?”

“Yeah.” They sat for a while. The wheels mumbled on the road and Zeller watched the moon until it vanished.

“Do you want to talk about it? Or maybe what we never got around to Thursday morning?”

Price shook his head. He looked so much older. They were both older, Zeller knew, but he looked ancient. It hasn’t felt like four years. “I think I’m going to retire soon.”

Zeller looked down at his lap. They would be at the airport soon and the moment would be lost. “Why?”

Price grinned out the front windshield. “I’m getting old, kid.”

Zeller’s hands clenched on his lap. He didn’t feel angry. It was more like resentment. After all they’d gone through, all they survived, this is how they would end – Jack Crawford’s brilliant experiment – with a geriatric wheeze. Price slipping off to retirement, him in the rut of Crawford’s mistakes, Katz dead, and Graham playing _Cast Away_ in the Florida Keys. “And me?”

The question was too loud, too bitter for the early morning. They passed a sign with a pictogram of an airplane. Zeller kept his eyes fixed forward. Price’s phone rang. Zeller waved him off. All the fight ran out of him. “I’ll get it. You’re driving.” Vauth was on the other end. She started talking the moment they connected. Her voice echoed though the car speakers.

“The second team is running late. We’re going to be borrowing some people from the local office. You’d better have Zeller or you’re fired.”

“Okay.” Price grinned at Zeller.

“Good.” The call disconnected.

“I guess you could have let me sleep in.”

“Then we’d both be out of a job, and I wouldn’t get my pension.”

The airport looked like a spaceship in the distance. Zeller reached for the radio. “Can…”

“Sure”

There was a burst of music. Lounds’ voice floated through the car. “… I can say with some certainty that this is a case Will Graham is uniquely qualified for…” Zeller slapped the button so hard his palm ached.

“The fuck was that?”

Price winced. “No idea.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

 # #

In the high mountains of West Virginia a truck air-braked. It was midmorning. The driver, John Famish, pulled off to the shoulder. He had pushed through the night and his pelvis hurt from sitting.

When he climbed back in the cab the radio crackled.

“Rooster to area, over.”

“Check Rooster, this is Red Letter, over.” Famish released the button.

“I’m coming north towards New York. There’s a four door broke down on the southside. If someone swings by I’d be much obliged. Over.”

“Copy Rooster. Red Letter will be passing by in sixty. Over.”

Famish turned over the engine. As it rattled him his bones ached. The sunscreen his wife had packed melted into water that was tacky on the seats.

An hour later he saw the four door. It was a gonner. He called ahead to the dispatch. The car had hit a tree head on, almost split in two down the center. Famish couldn’t see any rubber. They never even tapped the brakes.

His cell buzzed in his pocket.

“Mr Famish this is Dora. We spoke earlier. The sheriff has some stateies coming your way. Just hold tight.”

“Should I check for bodies or something?”

“Only if it’s safe. Keep the line open.”

There was no body in the car. The seats were cloth, grey with white piping and clean. Oil dripped onto the ground. The stench clung to Famish like a bad idea.

“There’s no one here.”

“Get back to your truck, sir.” Dora’s voice was tight with nerves. “Go on and lock the doors. They’re ten minutes out.”

“Where they ejected?”

“Just get in your truck Mr Famish. Somebody’s called the FBI.”

 # #

The plane was crammed with people and equipment. Zeller could see the back of Hanson’s head. He ignored her, turning back to Coltnoir. She had some graphs from the Art guys in New York. Price was taking proper notes and some of the other techs were standing over their seats.

“They think that the bodies are preserved in some way. Pre-coated and then submerged layer by layer. If done right there is no oxygen and thus….”

“No decomp.” Price looked a Zeller. “He’d have to practice.”

Zeller nodded. “A lot. Animals maybe?”

“He’d have to work his way up to size.” Price swiped a finger across the screen and opened up an email. He was still pecking away at it when Zeller crashed into sleep.

 # #

Someone shook him awake. Zeller’s eye were gummy and he could taste the sourness of his mouth. It was Price again. Always had his back.

“Come on.”

The plane was mostly empty.

“I told Vauth that I needed you to carry some things for me.”

Zeller nodded and hefted the case Price handed him. The plane had taxied away from the airport. Around them was the jagged horizon of New York. A staircase had been rolled to the door and they staggered down it. At the perimeter Zeller could see a few journalists. They were huddled together like a flock of jays, bright and screeching. One was trying to get a soundbite by yelling at the local uniform in front of him.

“What’s going on?” The journalist had the starved look of a sales man. “What’s going on?”

Zeller had troubled jigsawing the case into the trunk and let Price take over. The camera in his bag weighed heavy on his shoulder. They were bundled in the car and dove into the maelstrom of Queens.

 # #

San Diego was hours behind, still in the deep night. Marsha Klassen balanced the canvas stack. Her arms ached. The galley door had been propped open with a brick. The owner, Francine Wilson, would have a fit.

She could see the shadow of someone walking across the room.

“Kyle?”

There was a clatter from the front space.

“In here.” His voice was strained. The latest installation was an ugly mix of trash bags and carefully shredded money. Marsha wished art still had meaning. She loved the depth of symbolism in early American art. This was just filth.

Kyle had a grid map in one hand. He was painstakingly placing each part. Wilson wanted it to be exact. The fans on the high ceiling would move them anyway. Klassen didn’t care. This had as much depth as the ball pit in the Tate. Nostalgia and pandering. It made her tired.

“Can you help with E4? The knots keep coming out.”

“Sure.”

She set the canvases on the floor. The top one was a leering dog in dark colors. Its tongue was green and the eyes were egg-yellow. Filth.

“How’s the project going?” Kyle was muraling public schools nearby.

“Good. Still working on yours?”

“It’s a process.” Klassen used her teeth and hands to pull the bags tight. “I don’t think anyone’s found my installation.”

“That’s a bummer. Maybe you could make a website about it? A scavenger hunt?”

She shook her head. “I want it to be more organic.”

“Let me know when you get famous. I’ll tell everyone I used to scattered shredded paper with the great Marsha Klassen.”

##

The body had been discovered during renovations of the thirty-seventh floor of the de Santu building on 38th Street. All the walls had been stripped of drywall. The metal struts gleamed in the weak dawn. It was cold. Zeller ducked deeper into his jacket. The portable lights buzzed. The block was opaque in the slanted shadows. The man inside was twisted, rebar running around him like the flow of a current. Vauth was in the corner on the phone.

Price dusted the door knobs. The power left dark streaks on the burnished metal. Around them the scene techs were working in jerky moments. They were like hesitant stick bugs walking one step at a time.

They used the service elevator to move the bock to the ground floor. It was loaded onto a borrowed service truck. Zeller and Price were the fourth car in the caravan.

They left the radio off.

 # #

Rebecca “Rasi” Cohen kept her eyes on the screen when the federal offers waked in. There was a few agents and in the back loitered some techs. Two looked familiar but she couldn’t place them.

The block was on the table. Across the back and sides were thin scratches. This wasn’t covered in evidence handling.

Vauth looked over the room. “There’s been a change in procedure. We’re going to cut this one open.”

“With all the metal in the way?”

“New York gave permission twenty minutes ago. There’s no point wasting time for Kansas and Louisiana to get back to us.” She turned to Cohen. “Can you handle this?”

“Give me some of your people. They need experience with this – I don’t handle shit like this on the daily.”

Vauth looked back. “You have Price, Zeller, and Glenn. Call Marissa when you have finished. And fax a copy to Bloom. I don’t care what she told you.”

 # #

Once the block was breached they hacked away at it like an ice floe. Around the metal had to be shaved thin and then cracked. It was hot work. Zeller was by the feet. Price was trying to strip some rebar clean under a black light. Glean used sandpaper underneath the left hand. She would have to switch to a finer grit soon. Off to the side Cohen was dissolving shards in a fume hood. She wrote a note then handed Zeller a plastic bottle.

“Try this.”

He poured it two inches from the body. Ten minutes later they wiped it clear. There was slow progress.

“I got the formula from Coltnoir and Art Crimes.”

“Would this damage the tissue?”

“It might. Let’s do five minutes on your side.” Glenn nodded.

The smell was sharp, chlorinated. Zeller could taste the early morning on his teeth. It was like a casino down here, bright lights and no clocks. He had lost the time hours ago.

Cohen separated the useful data and left. Her soft shoes made no noise. Price set the rebar aside.

“It is industry standard. They are going to be impossible to trace. We should put something in the papers. This is a lot to go missing.”

“Good idea.”

Price went to the phone and made the call. He was still talking when Cohen came back.

“Vauth wants us to get down to workable material.”

“This is going take all night.”

“Then don’t waste time talking.”

 # #

In Sequoia National Park the sun was hot. The starch had faded out of Brian Falcon’s uniform. It billowed as he walked.

At first he thought it was a mirage. A distortion bent the undergrowth. No mirages could from in the forest, not that he knew of, and he crept closer. He broke into a cold sweat at the sigh sight. The sealant hadn’t held though the hot days and damp nights.

Whatever was inside the block had moldered. He marked the spot on waxy waterproof paper and hiked to a clearing with a signal. 

The park was closed in thirty minutes.

 # #

Zeller stood in the room. His head ached. Vauth was livid in a detached way. Her career was suddenly tightly wound with the case. The people above her wanted this done. Someone in the New York office sent some pictures to _Tattle Crime_. They were from an older phone but the image was impossible to mistake.

“I know you think that public support is helpful. We’ve had over a hundred tips for this case in the past hour. Wackjobs. So here is how we’re going to move forward. If you are discovered leaking anything; telling your family or friends the gender, the height, the amount of dust at the scene, you will be fired.”

“I know some of you have been calling him the Paperweight. I don’t care what you call him privately. Keep it off chatter and out of internal paperwork. There has been another body discovered in California. It is in a bad way. The LA office will processes and send the data to Washington. I want you, and this one, back there by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Cohen tells me that you got most of the block cut away. It’s a place to start.”

 # #

It was almost ten when Zeller locked the front door. While he heated a convince dinner in the microwave he spread blurry copies of the files across the table. The body in California had rotted. The photographs showed where the liquid had leaked between the layers. That was how he did it – the slow pouring and setting of resin.

Art Crimes was frothing over this. The most excitement they had before this was when Dolerhyde ate the Blake painting in Boston. He phone glowed. There was an update on _Tattle Crime_. The headline was cut off but Zeller could see “The Paperweight Strikes…” When Vauth found the leak she would plug it with impunity.

The man in the metal cage was between thirty and fifty. Someone had the bright idea to get x-rays and this one had a metal hip. Zeller felt a cool detachment from the mess of Vauth’s politics. He left the tray steaming on the top of the microwave. As he read he scratched out notes in the margins. Hanson had sent along another analysis. It was useful for sketching out the scene in New York. The dust had been thin but undisturbed. It had come down the line that the bodies might have been found out of order. As he read the room fell away. Two men, two women. Random heights and ages. But nothing is random – even Lecter had criteria – they just had to find his. There was a headache perched on his forehead. The New York body should be free soon. Then they could see what the madman had left. There was something familiar about this. There was the silhouette of an idea gathering at the edges of his mind. 

Zeller made a list.

California, red wood

Louisiana, rocks

Kentucky, prairie

New York, metal

Something about it bothered him. The food was cold. He scraped it into the trash. Zeller poured two fingers of whisky. Then he chewed a Di-Gel and drank a glass of water. It cut through the swooping sickness.

 # #

There was enough of a cavity that Price was able to drill without fear. The bones were murky white streaks in the muck. A wetvac was used to pull out the slime. It was green with vein-like ropes of mold. Zeller scraped the inside of a metatarsal for marrow.

The DNA would be set to the Missing Persons lab in north Texas. A report from the U.S. Geological Survey was in Price’s inbox. He read it as Zeller bagged the sample.

“There’s some plankton in the rocks. There were pulled out of the ocean at some point. The resin scorched the outside but when the dust was introduced water – bam. There was life. They’ve narrowed it to between New Orleans and Galveston. Do you like fish, Brian? The Gulf Stream is a great place to cast a line. Graham was always thrilled with it.”

“Thrilled?”

“As thrilled as that man could ever get.”

Zeller signed the envelope then the package.  It was getting late in the afternoon and Price jawed on his gum. The stink of faux-citrus hung around them. “Want a stick?”

It had a metallic aftertaste. Between them the bones were labeled and left to dry. It was another woman. She had a spiral fracture, at least five years old, in her right leg and worn kneecaps.

The camera shutter thundered in Zeller’s hands.

# #

Local cops were nervous and bullying by turns. Zeller watched one shout at Vauth’s go-between, a haggard former accountant named Hill. The AG in Kentucky overruled the stay, pissed that New York and Louisiana beat them in the cooperation. The office was insistent that Lounds’ new above the fold didn’t have anything to do with it. Working nonstop had released all the bones. The rabbit was very real. Art Crimes sent it by federal express to the American Institute of Taxidermy.

The red wood body had been dead three years. She had never been reported missing. Price was talking to an insurance provider in Wisconsin. They had been flagged with the doctor who did the hip replacement.

His name was Frank Doyle. His wife flew down and demanded the body. Her book club was protesting at the mayor’s brownstone. Price was sitting with her in their office, keeping her preoccupied with tea as he talked on the phone. She had been cry on and off all morning.

“We’re turning over the body.” Vauth sounded like she hadn't had any sleep.

Zeller didn’t protest. They had what they could use. Everything was recorded and digitized.

“And Bloom sent a profile.”

“Really?” He was surprised.

“She emailed it to Lounds,” her mouth twisted in distaste, “who is giving us ten hours before she posts it.”

“Considerate.”

“It’s too late in the day for her to get the late night breaking news so she’s angling for the breakfast shows.” Fox and Friends would have to spot ready first. They were good at shuffling. “I’ve had it copied to your and Price’s inboxes. There’s a pow-wow in an hour. Have something for me.”

Widow Doyle was showing Price an old collection of photos. He was smiling as she spoke. Zeller left them there.

##

There was a divide in the room. Local cops and staties sat near the front, armed with their little notebooks. Price had saved him in seat in the back.

“Bathroom?”

Zeller nodded. Bloom’s profile, condensed to bullet points, was projected on the wall. Nothing they didn’t already know. Methodical, skilled, and had a large space to work. Vauth didn’t wait for the room to quiet.

“It’s been confirmed that the victims were drugged with gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid. We have also retraced Mr. Doyle’s last day, thanks in part to his wife.”

The noise stuttered to silence. “He was last seen with this woman.” Next was an oversaturadted still from CCTV. “Doyle went out for drinks alone the night of April 7th at Paddy’s in south Bronx. He was abducted that night. That is who he left with. She is around five foot seven inches, white, dark haired, and driving at gray 1994 Toyota four door with local plates. If she rented this car, if she lives in New York, if she slept with him I want to know.” She waves a hand. “Go.”

Price watched them scramble for the door.

“Come on Brian. I’ll buy you dinner.”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, I’m not. Come on. I’ll get you a rubin and fries. I know it’s your weakness, and I want some cheesecake.”

“Alright.”

“That’s the spirit.”


End file.
